Early Times Report
Jammu, June 28: Residents of Bandhu Rakh are up in arms against the former BJP MLA, Kavinder Gupta and former Congress MLA, Raman Bhalla, who they alleged "deprived them from being a part" of Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC), consequently the area is reeling under severe basic civic amenities. In recently held Civic Bodies election in month of October, 2018, JMC extended its limit by including Arjun Vihar and Ekta Vihar areas of Kunjwani into its limit but left our village namely Bandhu Rakh from make part of Urban bodies, locals told Munish Gupta. Munish Gupta, Editor Early Times who would be contesting forthcoming Assembly elections as an Independent candidate from Gandhi Nagar constituency, on Friday interacted with people of all walks of life of Bandhu Rakh and its adjoining lanes of Arjun Vihar which fall in Municipal limit as part of its mass contact programme. During his mass contact programme, residents apprised him about the unavailability of basic civic amenities particular lack of transport facilities, low voltage, erratic power cuts that plaguing the whole locality. "However, our village has comes under the Panchayat Babliana but neither any development works is initiated by Rural Development Department nor Municipal Committee", said Jagjeet Kour and added that despite being part of Gandhi Nagar Constituency, the former MLAs, Raman Bhalla and Kavinder Gupta never visited us during their tenure to heard the problems being faced by them. Simranjet Kour told Munish Gupta that the lane which connecting from the Ranjit College of Education to Bandhu Rakh was constructed nearly 15 year ago. Thereafter neither the Congress nor the BJP's MLAs come forward for blacktopping it. Now the lane has been turned dilapidated, drains system totally collapsed, garbage is littered here and there. The residents of Arjun Vihar have dumped their garbage in our village limit due to absence of any dustbin the municipal limit. "The population of our locality has been increased many folds but the PDD department not upgraded the transformers. Two transformer of 250 KV were installed but not sufficient to meet the local needs. For upgradation, we repeatedly pleas to PDD and even former MLAs have yield no result", said Gurvinder Kour and added that the streetlights were installed have gone kaput. Gurupal Kour told Munish Gupta that we were residing here in last many years but my husband (Avtar Singh) and her son and daughter-in-law (Mittar Pal Singh and Pooja Kour) were still not enrolled as voter here. "My husband was earlier enrolled but in new list his (husband) name was deleted, the reason best known to them", she said. "A group of ladies who were standing outside their home told Munish that despite our areas come under Municipal limit but all the basic amenities still elude them. Unscheduled power curtailment, lack of sanitation, wild grasses bushes has been grown in vacant plots and dumped garbage, is not only become a breeding ground for mosquitoes, but its foul smell giving sleepless night, they said and added that all the tall claims were made by successive MLAs before election are lying flat as no development can be seen in Arjun Vihar. |